


This Is Not The End Of Us

by Ellizawiththestars



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anticipation, Avengers - Freeform, Avengers Compound, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Awesome Pepper Potts, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Black Widow - Freeform, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes Returns, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Captain America - Freeform, Captain Marvel - Freeform, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Heartbreak, Hulk - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Iron Man - Freeform, Love, M/M, Marvel Universe, Multiverse, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, POV Natasha Romanov, POV Third Person, Parallel Dimension, Parent Tony Stark, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Plot Twists, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Natasha Romanov, Pym Particles, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Spider-Man - Freeform, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Superheros, Time Travel, Timeline What Timeline, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Vormir, Weird Plot Shit, What Happened in Budapest, Women of Marvel, morgan stark - Freeform, she's got help
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-02-28 07:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellizawiththestars/pseuds/Ellizawiththestars
Summary: Starting at Vormir and high-tailing it from that point, this is the story of a spy and a soldier and a long lost friend that may be something more. This is a story of a man made of iron and the family he fought for. This is the story of what came after. It's human and heartbreaking and selfish and rare. It's fleshing out the characters you thought you knew, because they have a bigger story to tell.Alternatively: someone else dies at vormir, thanos never attacks, and the snap that brought everyone back did a whole lot more than just that. it might have ripped a few holes in our universe. or should i say, universeS.





	1. Chapter 1

Ch. 1: Vormir

 

This was exactly like Budapest. Suddenly they were both 22 again and at each other’s throats. Nervous balls of energy hidden under white knuckles and shaded glasses. Glints of metal knives making slight appearances but never moving out in full force. Never an attack, instead a delicate dance. The only difference was that this time there were words instead of knives, carefully chosen to not provoke the other. Acutely aware of the cliff to their right, acutely aware of beating hearts and restless minds. Natasha spoke first, her voice steady and strong in a way that surprised even herself.  
“I am not letting you do this”.  
This was an obvious command, not a question or something to ponder. This was selfless and heroic and it tasted like bitter blood in her mouth. A brief memory of Clint’s daughter came to the forefront of her mind for a fraction of a second. Her eyes, glinting the same as his. Her instincts, quick as a bird’s. A memory of herself at the same age melted in. Nausea. Fear. Bruised arms and two neat little braids.  
The decision had come as swiftly as a bullet.  
She raised her arm and swung her body slightly to the right, fast as a whip, aware that Clint’s instincts matched hers or even bested them. Half-expecting him to catch her arm midair before she used it as clever leverage to throw her body off the cliff in one fluid movement. Half-hoping that he would make contact before she could. His arm shot up and held her wrist midair, his fingers wrapped so tightly around her that they left white impressions on the skin. Natasha looked at him, deep into his eyes. Because this was a fight, and she knew how to fight. Because this wasn’t a conversation. Because one of them would die here.  
His voice came out paced and punctuated, a labor on each syllable.  
“Don’t you even think about it”.  
She forced her arm down, bringing Clint’s with it and taking an appeasing step into the rocky terrain of the cliffside and away from the edge. Not her conceding, not yet, but realizing that this was so much more than a rash decision. Clint slid his hand from her wrist to her fingers and held them tightly, mournfully. Natasha never bowed her head down, never changed her line of site. There were no exits to scope for, no details to remember about a possible enemy, no disguise to wear or bullets to fire. There was no villain or alien race in this moment. It was suddenly and inexplicably, solely them. Clint’s face had grown gruff with age, creases folding his forehead and nose and mouth. There was blood stained there, in his eyes and the palms of his hands. Traces of what he tried to be after he thought there was nothing left for him. How he had called Natasha from a burner phone in Tokyo months ago and asked her if she still believed in the word “Avenger”. After a significant pause she had responded that she did, because there was so much to avenge, so much to fix. He had laughed bitterly and the line stayed quiet for a long and lonely time before he spoke again, a voice filled with hurt and loss and fear and vengeance. “There’s nothing left now. It’s empty. It’s revenge”. The line had clicked off before Natasha could finish tracking the location.

 

“It was always going to end like this Clint” Natasha’s voice cracked around the edges now, too high for her liking and too broken to sound sure.  
He didn’t respond verbally, just shook his head slowly as tears formed in the corners of his eyes. He didn’t need to agree because he already had, in so many ways.  
At the compound a few weeks ago when he came back from his months long murder spree. They had sat together outside, in the early morning before anyone else was up. She didn’t bring up the name Ronin, or Tokyo, or Cairo, or his blood trail and weary eyes. She had simply held his hand and let him press his forehead to her shoulder as to muffle desperate sobs. They were so uncharacteristic of him, so far removed from his past and her past and the mantra that was thrust into every fiber of her being when she was a little girl in Russia, “Only the weak cry”. She had held him and let him lose himself in the fabric of her shirt for a few moments before he found his composure. After some time she had said observantly and slowly, “They didn’t teach us everything. They broke us.”  
There was so much in that. So much in both of them, both aware that the only other person to ever possibly understand their trauma, their childhood, their adulthood, the pain they carried and the identity they would never be able to relinquish was sitting right next to them. Shoulders pressed against each other, hearts breaking, early morning sunrise and the soft and dewy breeze of 6 a.m.

Natasha and Clint didn’t need to communicate verbally. They predicted the other’s feelings from a twitch in brow or flinch in a pinkie, a lurch of heart and breaking of soul understood within the raised hairs on the back of the other’s arm. It took time, but they broke these walls down on that cliff. Traded how they should communicate, how they were taught to communicate, how a spy should communicate for who they had become. Who they are now. They argued. The words were bitter and spitting then cautious and soft, the churn of a wave and its splatter across a shore.  
Clint first, “It’s my turn now. You have done enough”  
Then Natasha, skirting after him, voice breaking, cleaning up broken glass. “I haven’t done anything. I don’t have anyone. This is on me”  
“I’m not worth it”  
“I’m not doing this because of you”  
Then Clint’s voice, breaking from its steady pace for the first time, coming out slowly, his lips pronouncing every syllable and breath hitching on the last word.  
“Nat, I have no redemption. I have nothing. I’ve taken too much. I’ve left too little”.  
Vomir trashed and writhed with them, distant pools of purple water bubbling and mountain ranges of violet blue piercing the overcast sky. This was no place to die, and yet it would be. Because nothing was fair and everything was. A single soul to bring back billions of others. One death for so many. One heartbreak to soothe countless others.  
Natasha pressed her forehead against Clint’s, her cheeks red from cold and eyes damp from tears she swore she wouldn’t let escape. Her hand found Clint’s, hard and callused. Her words came in fits and starts, gasping for the air they were both sharing now, the taught skin of her forehead pressing red marks onto Clint’s.  
“I want to--”, a sore gulp and the releasing of one tear that slid lazily down her cheek. A mockery she thought. Not nearly enough and still too much. He urged her on, no words this time. They were spies again, children, white knuckles and thrashing hips, glinting knives and too much blood, broken souls. His arm clutching her close now, pulling at her back, bringing her to his chest. Her first thought was that it was warm there, and that Vormir was such an unforgiving, cold planet. Then, the sudden realization that she loved him. In no way she had ever loved before. In no way she ever knew you could love someone. It was palpable, the heat between them and stories they shared, memories of fallen places and no forgiveness and Budapest and Prague and Cape Town and everywhere else. The battle of New York, finding solace in each other. Meeting Clint’s family, hearing the words “Auntie Nat” from the breathless and sticky mouth of a five-year old girl and feeling as if her heart had been stretched to the absolute most. Late nights at the compound poring over reports and chinese takeout, joking over everything. Training sessions, picking each other up when the other fell, having the other’s back. Slipping into Romanian, Russian, German when no one else was around because it was their secret language, their memories, their hurt and identity.  
In all of it, there was Clint. Calling Natasha desperately when he couldn’t find his family, when they vanished into thin air. Panicking for breath. There was Clint in the kitchen of the compound, carefully washing dishes long after everyone had gone home. There was Clint in battle, watching out for not only Nat but everyone on their side, every civilian, every toddler that got stuck in cross-fire and every defenseless mother. There was Clint in Budapest, the first to back down. The one to pull his knives from the seams of his clothing and lay them on the table. To raise his hands and offer them to Natasha, to say trust me. And she had. The worst breach of protocol she had ever committed. For all intents and purposes, it would have gotten her killed. But it was Clint. It was soft eyes and rough skin, almost never smiling but always optimistic.  
He was her soulmate, and she realized this right now, right as she also realized what he was about to do. They were a pair, they knew too much each other and loved too much about each other despite this. There was nothing romantic about her cheek pressed against his beating heart and the warm solace of his suit. As he pressed his lips to the top of her head and brought glistening eyes back down to meet hers, she realized that there was simply so much love she had taken for granted. 

“I want to be selfish”, she was beginning again this time more sure, “I want to be selfish, I never was. I don’t want to go. I don’t want you to go”. His jaw twitched, nose scrunched. Purposely giving too much away, saying but not saying what he was about to do. Giving her an ample chance to act.  
He moved closer to her, breathing into her ear and gripping her frame, whispering words that were a final goodbye. An I told you so ], An you always had me even if you had nothing ], An I understand you ], An I will do this for you because you are the only person in the universe who understands me.  
“I love you, Romanova”

And then, he was off, sprinting to the opposite edge of the cliff, shucking off his bow and arrows and letting them clatter to the ground. Becoming Clint and only Clint before he drew his last breath, releasing a superhero monomer, decades of pain, months of regret, not living up to who he was supposed to be. And Natasha was running alongside him, feet beating the ground and sinewy legs catching up to his. But not soon enough. She reached her arm out just as clint leaped over the edge. He slipped, and slipped. Natasha dug the heels of her feet against an assortment of sturdy rocks and layed flat on the surface of the cliff, torso and chest pressed firmly down. Her braid was coming undone and strands of white-red hair whipped across the planes of her face. Hanging onto her arm was Clint, 240 pounds of brawn and muscle, and a terrified expression. His broad knuckles eclipsed the paleness of her forearm, clenching it as a last ditch effort of salvation. His eyes held regret and purpose, both dueling to decide whether he should let go or urge Natasha to hold on so he could find his footing and pull himself up. Bracing herself with one arm pressed against the cliffside and the other acting as Clint’s lifeline, she breathed out hastily, “I need to tell you, I need to tell you--” and then just as suddenly as he had ended up in this position, he began to complete the act. Gingerly slipping his hand down Natasha’s arm, the friction leaving sweat marks, heat, and bruises. He dared a glance at the ravine below him, a certain death, a certain sacrifice. He felt everything in that moment, love and loss, fear eclipsing it all. Clint Barton was for all intents and purposes, a strong man in both character and stature. He was born and bred to be the best of the best. He had only felt true fear twice in his life, once when his family had disappeared and now in this moment. The truth behind Clint Barton the superhero, a silhouette that adorned Avengers memorabilia everywhere and earned him a hell of a reputation, was that Clint Barton was a man.  
“I want to tell you thank you”, Natasha’s words and warm breath piercing the stubbornly cold air.  
That was all. I love you had already been communicated in the quickness of her reflexes and stride of her gait as she chased Clint to the edge of the mountain. I wish it was me had already been said, a thousand times over. I’m sorry wasn’t necessary. This wasn’t her fault. This wasn’t anyone’s fault. What was left was Thank You. Two words so heavy she knew she had to say them. A seal on who they were now. Not spies or agents, not heroes or villains, not each other’s enemy. Hauntingly, painfully, human.  
Thank you for saving me in Budapest.  
Thank you for believing me when I told you I wasn’t doing well.  
Thank you for driving up to the compound whenever you could to see how I was doing.  
Thank you for German and Russian and Romanian. Thank you for our language. Thank you for accepting Natalia Romanova: killer. For accepting Natalia Romanova: spy. For accepting Natasha Romanoff and Natalia Romanova: your best friend. For loving every piece of me. Thank you.  
The surprising softness of Clint’s lips met the rigidness of her arm, and then before she could think twice, he let go. 

 

Planes of Vormir 

Natasha screamed into nothingness. Heart pounding too fast. Thumbing the smoothness of the soul stone against her palm. She sat in a pool of shallow water until her voice went hoarse. Minutes melted into hours, then to days. Her hair had come undone and hung mussed around her sunken face. Cheekbones too pronounced, jaw too weary, eyes bloodshot. No voice from all the screaming. All the things she was and all the things she had left behind. Consuming guilt. The planet’s sky turned to a dull violet, signaling what Natasha assessed as morning. Soon she unlocked the pym particle in her uniform and blinked out of Vormir, a last glance of the mountainous range in the distance her only homage to the brother, friend, soul mate she had left behind. 

Avengers Compound

The first thing Nat sensed when she returned to the place she had called home for the past five years was jubilation. Tony’s and Thor’s and the raccoon’s and Scott’s and Bruce’s and Steve’s voice tumbling on top of each other in a high of victory.  
Thor exclaiming “I had the ability to visit my mother!” then an an exasperated retort, “You can’t do that! What did I tell you about past selves, we had a whole conversation about this the quantum realm is extremely nuanced have you ever heard of the butterfly effect I can’t believe--”  
Then Steve’s voice full of gusto and humor, “Wait till you hear what I was up to Scott”  
The sound of laughter, Bruce big and hearty contrasted with what she was sure were Tony’s observant smirks. It was a strange state of momentary entrapment in the quantum realm, not fully in the real world yet able to hear and sense it in a heightened way. She would have to look into Tony’s files about the phenomenon in the coming days. When she came to, it was with feet planted firmly on the ground. Her eyes had dried and the only remnant of Vormir was a still damp uniform clinging to her slender frame. Banner noticed her first, his surprised “Nat!” piercing the air and enveloping her in a way that could only be described as (pow comforting. She had promised herself she would not cry again. All the tears that could be shed had been, on a planet of death. She would not bring them here. Grief existed in every inch of her however, observable to all members of the team. Gone was tight posture (Steve remembered how once he had instructed him to “Hold yourself up as if there’s a string connecting from the top of your head to the ceiling”), gone was an unreadable expression (“You have to convince everyone that you’re both their enemy and their friend Banner, stop wearing your heart on your sleeve”). The gaping hole to her side was jarring and halted the mood of the room.  
“A soul for a soul” she muttered, voice weak and hoarse, intonation almost mocking the way she had heard Red Skull say the decisive words in what seemed like an eternity ago. Banner came forth first, his face showing only concern, no anger. He wrapped his arms around her delicately and brought her head to his shoulder with the palm of his hand, staring dumbfounded past the crown of her red hair. She crumpled into him, body weak and worn and desperately void of strength. His affection knew no bounds and for the next hour he held her like this, long after the rest of the team had long filed out of the garage and into the main compound.It was silent except for the pitter patter of rain on the roof and glass windows.  
After some time:  
“I’m so sorry I---”  
And then  
“Shh… shhh” Bruce murmuring into the nape of her neck, “Nat, you did nothing wrong”  
It was true and it wasn’t. It was fair and it wasn’t. It hurt and hurt and it hurt and there was no reward for the pain. And finally the fierce rain slowed.

Avengers Compound Later that night

Nat tossed and turned until 2 a.m. haunted by nightmares and waking up in fits of sweat and muffled screams, jaw clenched onto a bundle of bedsheets to not make a sound. It was Steve that appeared in her doorway at 2:23 a.m., tired eyes and flannel pajamas, hair mussed into waves. She sat up in bed, curious and hungry for comfort but refusing to look weaker than she already did.  
“Did you hear me?”  
“No”, he responded after a pause as he made his way to the edge of the bed and sat down carefully, smoothing the linen under his palm, “I just know”  
Nat was quiet, sensing that he wanted to continue. It was in the placement of his hand on the sheet, thumb turned in towards her and feet pointed in the same direction.  
“I just know”, he began again, “For me it was Bucky. The nightmares seemed as if they’d never stop”.  
Natasha brought her knees up to her chest and patted the space in front of her, breaking down a bit of her wall because she knew Steve was right. If there’s anything at all he understood about her it would be this. He moved eagerly into the spot and placed a hand on Natasha’s knee.  
“I blamed myself. I should have been more careful. I should have found him sooner.” then slower, looking straight at her in the opaque darkness, “I should have…. I should have …. I should have….That’s how I lived Nat. That’s who I was”  
He shuffled on the bedsheets and rearranged his limbs, his hand shaking slightly.  
“I missed him so fucking much Nat, I still do. But I realized, or I am realizing that I’m not what happened and it’s not my fault”, his voice broke for an instant and then resumed, “I wish someone had told me that sometimes life is just sorely unfair. Sometimes it just sucks. Sometimes you lose people. And that’s not your fault. So i’m telling you that now.”  
Natasha was quiet for so long that Steve worried she had fallen asleep, but then she nodded, slowly at first then with more fervor. An agreement, however unspoken.  
“Steve, do you wanna go do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while?”  
Her voice was expectant with a hint of eagerness, and however tired Steve was, it was lost in that moment. He saw his years of grief in Natasha. This was the least he could do.  
“Sure Nat. What’s up?”  
She found his hand and squeezed it, then wordlessly rose from bed and threw on clothes. Steve hadn’t noticed she was partially undressed before but it didn’t really matter, they had changed in front of each other more times than he could count and Natasha was just Natasha. 

Nat had led him to a field in front of the compound, crickets chirping insistently in the background and tall grass itching his legs. She had her hair down now, falling into her face and obscuring white planes and bloodshot eyes with wisps of brilliant red. She looked so different, yet so herself. She gazed thoughtfully up at the sky and observed, “If someone had told me 11 years ago that there’s more out there, that there’s aliens and that I’d fight them, I would have laughed in their face and then killed them”, then turned to him and finished thoughtfully, “It’s interesting how things change”.  
“I remember when I first met Thor I thought he was joking, about being a God of Asgard. That doesn’t make sense to me, everything out there.” Steve responded to her, laughing bitterly, “It didn’t make sense. I didn’t make sense”.  
“You’re an old soul. Literally”  
“So are you Nat, you just had more time than me”  
She nodded, then without warning yelled at the top of her lungs.  
Expletives and names and damnation galore. Some of it Steve recognized as German from his time during the war, some he recognized as Russian from his neighbor in Brooklyn who was a drunkard and a thief but an uncle to him and Bucky, teaching them bits of the language in between cursing out the government. Some was in Portuguese when she got especially fired up, her voice climbing on ‘Caralho!” and “Porra!”.  
Then there was English, breathless in the turn of languages that escaped her mouth, but still very much making an appearance. Steve caught the names of people she had trained with, an ex-lover she had told him about. When it seemed like she was done she turned to Steve out of breathe but looser, the hint of a smile dotting the curve of her lips.  
“Your turn Steve”  
He tried to back out, assuring her that really he was fine, and he doesn’t need this, and thank-you-so-much-for-bringing-me-out-here-but-really-I’m-fine-I-cope-differently. It was futile.  
At 3 a.m. Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff went hoarse screaming the names of all the people who had ever wronged them, all the events they had buried deep under the soil of their souls. Then they fell onto the tall grass, exhausted and worn. All was quiet for a while, Natasha tracing constellations in the sky and Steve quiet, contemplative.  
Then suddenly, ‘Fuck’  
“That’s what I’m talking about Rogers, get it out of your system”, Natasha rolled over and patted Steve’s shoulder good-naturedly  
“No,” He responded, prodding an inconspicuous watch on his right wrist, “Fuck”  
Nat knew that tone, and suddenly any ounce of free-spirit deserted her. She sat up swiftly, eyes trained on Steve’s faint outline in the dark night and goosebumps dotting her arm, palming a concealed holster on her left thigh.  
She tapped Steve’s shoulders thrice, each offering a larger compression than the former. A code they had devised years ago.  
He faltered a moment on its meaning then sat up, murmured, “No no nothing like that Nat”.  
She knew better than to voice her concerns with an unknown threat around so she sat silently instead, waiting for his explanation.  
“It’s this watch, Tony gave it to me ages ago, said that if I’m ever on the grounds to wear it so he can communicate with me--you know since telecoms are blocked here-- but he said he would only use it in emergencies”  
Steve stilled suddenly, every muscle tensing in expectation. In the quiet Natasha could her the watch buzz twice, then a long pause, then once.  
“Three,” he observed, a hint of panic in his voice, “Three means trouble”  
Nat pulled her and Steve off the ground in one fluid motion and unhitched her gun, taking with it a knife that she handed to Steve impatiently.  
‘I don’t fight with these’ he argued  
“You don’t have a shield, Cap, take what you can get”  
He let the knife, its glistening blade, hang between them for a moment before assuming it.  
As they sprinted back to the compound Nat breathed out, “What is it?” then, “Has he ever used it? What does it mean?”  
Steve cocked his head at a stray sound in the distance before replying, “I don’t know, the watch just warns me, brings me back if he needs backup. He’s never used it until now. It means something dangerous”

 

End chapter


	2. Chapter 2: Somewhere, sometime

New York, 1 day ago  
Two seconds ago he was in the middle of Manhattan, pretending to sync time with Tony and lying through his teeth that he would meet him at a 1970s army base. He would, but eventually. He would take his time. Because right now 80 years ago, the leaves on Brooklyn maples were just beginning to tinge red, and Steve Rogers couldn’t live his life out without ever seeing them again.

He had been a little bit selfish, or a lot bit selfish. Too selfish maybe. But it meant he could see Bucky so who was really keeping score anyways. Steve blinked into Brooklyn looking strikingly out of place. Mouth in a tight line, aging not in appearance but in the shallow depths of his soul, a form-fitting uniform made for a reality so detached from the one he was in now. He wasn’t who he was a year ago, a minute ago, even a second ago; in every single sense of the way. Now Steve Rogers had a mission, and it had absolutely nothing to do with stones or shields or allies or enemies. Now, it had everything to do with a carefully placed note and the sheer faith that a skinny, bruised up, 20-year-old kid from Brooklyn would heed its message.

The first order of business was clothing. Over the years he had picked up some things from Natasha, and even from Bucky about how to move without being seen. He started on Dock Street, just shy of the Brooklyn Bridge, and by the time he had made his way to Main he had adopted a brown overcoat, slacks, and an unassuming hat. Sure it had taken forever and sure it meant popping into one subway station only to walk up the other end more than once, but the clothing gave him a feeling he couldn’t shake. A slower gait, shoulders relaxed instead of pinned against his ears, hands in pockets, not visibly clenching and unclenching. The coat smelled of cigarette smoke and old eastern European seasoning, something so niche yet instantly and infallibly recognizable. Something like home. It all came to him in a triumphant staccato of memory. Shouts of laughter, the scratch of a voice on a radio, riding bikes down tree-lined streets. Walking with Bucky to the good part of town and examining the stately brownstones that lined the streets, assuring each other that yes, one day they would live there as neighbors until the end. They would have beautiful wives and well-behaved children, they would play baseball on Saturday afternoons in the heat of the sun and everything would be absolutely fine. Steve walked faster, trying to brush it all away terribly unsuccessfully. He was everywhere, and so was Bucky. It was cathartic and terrifying all at once. The streets of Brooklyn were now a graveyard for everything he had left behind and simultaneously a honey-soaked moment frozen in time.  
The rest tumbled on top of him and he pieced together the bits. Eating dinner with Bucky and his family when Steve’s own mother wasn’t in the best health. Always finding a way to brush shoulders and knock knees.  
The winter of 1935 when Steve got so inexplicably sick that everyone presumed his death would be inevitable. Except of course for his mother and Bucky’s mother and Bucky himself, who would alternate shifts of feeding his feverish self spoonfuls of well seasoned, healing broth.  
There was Bucky, leaning in, putting them closer than they ever had been even when roughhousing around the floors of their neighboring apartments, surely only doing this because he thought Steve was asleep. Steve wasn’t, and what a wonder that he managed to pretend so well that night because he had the utter privilege of hearing a 15-year old drunk with fear and hope and childish love version of Bucky whisper into his ear, breath warm and rich, “You better go and get yourself better. I don’t think Brooklyn is going to be worth anything at all without you”.  
Steve Rogers survived the night. Entirely because he heard those words.

Brooklyn was melting into fall now, just as he expected it to be. There was a nervous rush around him as he walked down the street. Wartime highs and lows pierced the seconds between each breath the city took. A mother somewhere had just gotten the news that the son she had sent off to war wouldn’t be returning at all. A soldier's best girl that he left behind had just taken a men’s office job somewhere, pleased to help the war effort and on a high of confidence for earning a job not meant for her. It was a time drenched in melancholy and bitter-sweet honey. Steve transversed Brooklyn quickly and with purpose, reaching his destination in a time agreeing with the mental schedule he had created. He stared at the building in question now with a sort of fear and love and perplexity. Tenement homes for industrial workers that should have been foreclosed decades ago. Bricks threatening to collapse if they felt an unagreeable breeze of air, must and dust and a cacophony of children’s voices rising and falling in endless games of tag encircling the building. They were entirely blackened feet covered in soot, red noses from the cold, winter coats in need of repair, and unbridled enthusiasm. Steve allowed himself an unburdened half-smile when he spotted Bucky’s siblings in the mix. Two little brown haired boys and their older sister, perpetually blond and nagging. He stepped into the eclipsing shadow of the opposite tenement building as the games neared him, careful not to be seen. His gaze combed up the structure, realizing quickly that reaching his apartment without being noticed would perhaps be the most straightforward part of this plan. Steve had been plotting this for some time, ever since Scott Lang had affirmed the existence of Pym particles to the team. Some careful research into Tony’s files in the middle of the night and a security breach of the lab where Scott and Bruce were developing replicas of the original capsule was all Steve needed to secure a couple of extras for his own use. He knew it was selfish, but really when was the last time he got to be selfish? When was the next time he ever would be able to be again?

It was 2 pm and New York was at work, making it easy to slip into the building without being seen. He knew the way up by heart, which floor and which door and which way to turn the knob of apartment 3000 with exactly the right force so that it would pop open instead of getting stuck in the old frame. Steve had seen a lot of homes in his many years. He’d stepped on hundreds of wood floors and run his fingertips on countless sheaths of flowered wallpaper. This, was absolutely the only one he gauged worth remembering. He entered the apartment gingerly, careful not to make a sound out of respect for the memories that haunted the walls and grew between the cracks in the kitchen tile.  
There outside on the fire escape: the first time Bucky saw Cassiopeia in the stars. He had positively jubilant, jumping up triumphantly with bare feet banging the metal of the stairwell. Steve had laughed, sanguine with cheeks rushed with red. Maybe the flush was because it was the middle of summer and the heat was getting to him. Maybe it was because he had been the one to point the constellation out to Bucky and when his friend couldn’t find it, to carefully take his outstretched finger and guide it on Bucky’s straight to where the first star of Cassiopeia started, and then right until it ended. His fingertips hand lingered slightly too long on Bucky’s knuckles. 

Steve moved through the apartment as if in a tidal wave, stopping and starting again. Observing the carefully the stained couch and tattered rug, the emptiness and fullness of it all. There in the corner of the living room, Bucky Barnes during the New Year’s Eve party of 1940. The whole floor of the building had been invited by Steve’s mother into their cramped apartment and the walls were bursting at the seams with champagne and bouts of laughter. It was pink and gold and navy blue all at once, the scratch of a jazzy record player and bubbling of liquor in his cheek. Bucky had leaned against the wall opposite him, an arm slung over a Mary Sue type, giving her half-attention that she would mistake for full devotion just by how entranced she was by his swagger. They were 19 then and acutely aware of the fact that they were no longer children. Bucky had taken a factory job, earning him more muscle and manliness than Steve could ever aspire to have. The pair had grown apart, then back together, then apart again. Wavelengths on alternating frequencies. Steve missed him at the time, a feeling mingled with something else as well, something bitter and vile that rose in his throat when he saw Bucky kiss the girl that clung to him as the clock struck midnight. Steve had gnawed it down quickly, eclipsing the redness that grew in his cheeks with a glass of champagne brought hastily to his lips. And Bucky, ever a lionheart, spun the girl out of his embrace and met Steve’s eyes, giving him a sly wink, indicative of nothing, as of course he was drunk and this was all just Bucky being who he was. Or so Steve thought at the time.

Now, Steve checked the clock on that same wall, sighing when he saw the time. The 1942 version of himself fresh from a fight would be home soon, accompanied by a newly minted and freshly enlisted Bucky Barnes. He had to act fast. Steve drew a piece of note paper and a gaudy pen from the pad kept by the telephone and wrote out a message in his best imitation of his mother’s penmanship. He gave it a once over before hastily thickening the lines on the h’s and l’s to appear more convincing. Time was running out and this would have to do. Steve left the note clearly visible on the kitchen table and then moved swiftly outside the living room window and into the masking shadows of the unit’s fire escape.

Bucky and Steve, young as ever, entered the apartment a few moments later. Steve a string of pale energy and defeated purpose, Bucky made of leather and self-assurance. Yin and Yang in every way. Steve immediately noticed the note by the telephone because that’s where his mother always left her communications. Surely she would need him to buy yet another round of groceries or prompt him to search the newspaper for job opportunities or go cash a check. He felt his frustration building. Was it so much to ask just for a night by himself? He turned the note over in the palm of his hand unamicably, reading it once then twice then three times over. It was simply too good and too rich with honesty and deep rooted meaning. 

I won’t be home soon, had to pick up one of Marcia’s shifts.  
Don’t wait up.  
Stevie, I know about the two of you.  
And you still have all my love.  
See you soon,  
Ma

Steve’s breath hitched in his throat and he caught his hand on the kitchen countertop to steady himself. Tears threatened his eyes but he willed them away. This was so much. Entirely too much. He and Bucky were to go out dancing later with their best girls, one last hurrah before he was shipped off to God only knows where to kill a Nazi or two before coming home cold and gone. And he had held so much inside him until now, so much fear and denial and want and anger. So many Sunday mornings listening to Father Patrick’s sermons with heart pounding but hands folded into soft entangles of obedience, begging to Heaven to demolished what he felt building within him. And his Ma, good ol Ma who baked him warm bread and made spiced broth every time he was sick. Ma to him and Ma to Bucky. Ma in hard times and good times. She knew. And she still loved him. And suddenly every inch of Steve expanded and it seemed just as if his heart could burst at the seams.  
Bucky stood in the living room thumbing through a catalog of records, his uniform starting to crease at the edges and a careful furrow forming on his brow. Steve met him there, his own feet feeling as though they would give way under the floorboards and heart pounding so hard it felt as though it was in his throat, and surely, surely Bucky could hear it.  
“What is it, Steve?” Bucky asked, half of his attention still devoted to finding the perfect album, never quite looking up.  
Steve reached for the catalog and cautiously chose a single by a Nordic band he was particularly fond of. He placed the record on the turntable and brought the needle to its surface, gazing down pleased as jazz filled the air of the room. Bucky chuckled, surprised.  
“Not quite what I was thinking of Rogers, but I’ll take it”  
Steve wordlessly reached an arm to Bucky’s and wrapped his palm around the gritty surface of his uniform, feeling Bucky’s muscle tense below his touch. They had been at opposite wavelengths for a while, and this was a very sudden rejoining. Steve’s voice came softly, then building on each syllable until his words were decisive, surer than he had ever been.  
“I know we’re supposed to go dancing tonight with the girls and you’re gonna wear your uniform and be a little soldier man but the truth is I miss you and you’re my best friend and I have the feeling you’re going to be away for a long time so will you dance with me?”  
Steve gulped down the fear nestling in the back of his mouth. The fear of rejection, the fear that he had misread the past 10 years and that the stolen glances, brushed shoulders, and insistent banter they shared was nothing more than anything. Bucky didn’t smile, but he offered his hand out, letting it hang in the middle of them. Steve could hear his voice even if he kept his lips locked.  
Don’t play a joke on me, Rogers.  
Steve took hold of Bucky’s rough hand and thick fingers and wrapped them around his own. That was enough. Bucky pulled Steve in closer until the smaller boy’s head was pressed on his shoulder. And they danced, and music swelled around them and then faltered. There was so much love and hurt, so many missed opportunities, so so much and still too little. Above all, above anything else, they were best friends, even if there was more to acknowledge, even if the breath they shared now was drawn in quicker than usual. Even if they both knew two boys weren't supposed to hold each other like this or dance like this. Even if, even if, if even.

The war had torn them apart. Steve wanted desperately for it to be him in that uniform, him doing the country saving, him alongside Bucky. Bucky enveloped Steve’s small and sickly frame, one last show of protection.  
Outside the apartment bombs blazed down oceans away, children went hungry down the street and patriotic enlistment posters dotted storefront windows. Outside the apartment there was war and there was hell and soon enough both of them would face it. And sitting outside the fire-escape, Steve Rogers knew this. He watched as the pair rocked back and forth under soft golden lamplight, ricocheting minds and escaping tears locked inside a living room with a lovely song playing and a boy in uniform decked out for the war of the century. He had given them each other, even if one of them wouldn’t remember it as presently. He had given his past self peace, hope, calm. The job was done, even if his heart was breaking for more. He stole one more glance of Bucky at ease, one more moment of the both of them protected from what lay outside the doors of that apartment. He ducked down the fire escape and into the night, drawing off the coat and hat and all the memories of love and warmth attached to this place. Steve unhooked a Pym particle capsule from its metal sachet and let himself feel for a moment. Really and truly feel. Memories were washing over him in waves, triggered by his home and his best friend. Brought on by the sight of Bucky’s optimistic smile. Bubbly champagne and old records, warm soup and tired eyes, a racing heart and busy mind. Brooklyn in all its wartime glory. All the things he wanted to fix and all the things he couldn’t, creating a ribbon that wrapped his soul so tightly it felt as if he would tear himself at the seams.Too much. Entirely too much. The plan had one last step, the one that he was dreading, the one that reinforced his reality and made him stop living in someone else’s. He didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to leave, wanted desperately to remain in this small bubble of serenity. But he couldn’t and he got a distinct feeling he may never again get to. Wearily, he secured the capsule and blinked out of Brooklyn. He had an infinity stone to find.

Avengers compound, Today, 3 am

“Hey Nat, how’ve you been?” Tony asked absentmindedly as Natasha and Steve walked into the room, absorbed in digital files and muttering things to an ever-eager Scott who was hastily creating a multi-layered graph on a whiteboard behind him. Bruce noticed the breathless pair from his perch on a window ledge, file folder open on his lap and gentle eyes combing over them.  
Natasha stowed her gun quickly, but not soon enough for Bruce not to notice the flash of black tucked into her gray pants. He shot her a concerned glance which she dismissed with an ever so slight shake of the head.  
“We were- I was..There was an emergency, Steve said-” Her voice came out with a discernable pang of worry, underscored by what bordered on a whine.  
Tony removed his glasses and rubbed his temples slowly before opening his eyes again as if the act was laborious and the pair’s introduction to the scene a particular inconvenience.  
“Oh yeah, right” He began, giving a slightly humored glance to a pajama-clad Steve before nodding at the chairs surrounding the central conference table, “Go ahead, sit down. Where were you anyway? J.A.R.V.I.S detected a security breach”  
As the two claimed seats Natasha tapped the back of Steve’s hand twice in quick succession.  
Lie. Divert the question.  
“You bugged my room, Stark?” Steve mused, sitting down casually and bringing one leg up onto the conference table.  
Tony looked up from the files he was pouring over and took a deep, exasperated breath. “I didn’t bug anything, Steve. It’s a state of the art movement tracking system and you know I’d--”  
He was cut off by Thor entering the room, a throaty yawn preceding him. Steve’s expression was noticeably confused, much to Thor’s appesal.  
“Ah, you thought you were the only one? We all have one of these trinkets Steve Rogers” He said affably, tapping a rope bracelet on his wrist and taking a seat near the pair, clapping Steve on the shoulder good-naturedly. Natasha had seen the bracelet before but always assumed it was an Asgardian relic he wore to keep a memory of home, the realization that Tony had given seemingly everyone an emergency device and that her’s was nowhere to be found stirred a sudden pang of rejection. Next to her, Thor quickly assumed the role of the most unencumbered person in the room, almost lounging in his seat and fiddling with a lock of hair. Rocket sauntered in a few moments later, looking particularly sleep-deprived.  
Tony seemed to realize suddenly that they were all there and swiped some data holograms out of the air before facing them.  
“We have a problem. A big problem. One bigger than any of our asses can fix” He said, arms crossed on his chest and foot tapping the cement floor.  
“Yes,” Thor nodded agreeably, sarcasm flowing, “Half of the universe is gone”  
Tony opened his mouth to argue but Bruce stood up and waved him down. Banner addressed the room with careful words, cautious as ever but not skimping on severity.  
“There’s holes in our timelines, there are things toppling on top of each other, we weren’t careful enough--”, he was interrupted by Scott, detaching himself from the sprawling graph he had created and gesticulating, “The quantum realm, like I told you all before is very tricky. One misstep and everything goes wrong. Long story made very very short,” he paused for effect, “we made everything go wrong”.  
Natasha nodded along with the words, feeling more than a little out of her depth.  
“I hear what you’re saying”, she began, leaning forward in her chair onto the armrest, “But what is going wrong exactly, what consequences?”  
Bruce and Scott nodded at Tony, giving him reigns of how he wanted to deliver the information.  
“It seems like we lost track of the tesseract in 2012. And Steve fought with his past self. And Thor spoke to his mother. And I met my father. And who knows what else you all have been up to”  
His words were decisive, accusatory, hinging on worry. He massaged his temples again and gestured to Scott, who carried on the spiel.  
“Time travel isn’t supposed to happen, it’s not foolproof, and there’s rules. Big rules. We broke almost every single one of them. The quantum realm can support a few time hops but a group going to multiple different points in time, altering things and then returning to the present with dozens of alternate timelines in their wake? Nothing, nada, zilch to support that”  
Banner picked up Scott’s tangent contemplatively, “The truth is we don’t know what’s going to happen, there’s no precedent for this. Tony has set up sensors, and from the data we’re gathering it seems as there’s split holes in the physical world, and that different timelines are crashing into ours.”  
Tony pulled up a hologram of a news article from 1968 wearily. On it, a headline screamed, “Soviets put man on moon, Kennedy says we’ll be next!”.  
Steve leaned back in his chair, mind reeling.  
“So this is what we have now,” Tony said, gesturing to the hologram, “New events, new timelines, holes in the universe. Things that were never supposed to happen are happening or have happened. We don’t know what’s next, it could be that our memories change or that people from other timelines, other universes bleed into ours.”  
Natasha, Thor, and Steve exchanged glances of disbelief and Scott quickly remedied, “We just discovered that there’s multiple versions of our planet, of our timelines, so..there’s definitely that.”  
Steve cleared his throat, “What can we do to fix it?”  
Bruce spoke immediately, exhausted, rocking on the ball of his left foot, “We do still have the stones, and Tony’s put together a gauntlet that can support them. We’ll redo the snap, but this time bring everyone that’s gone, back. We’re hoping that the energy produced by the snap and the disruption of time will cause a diversion big enough to reset everything, make the timelines go back to how they were before we got the stones. We don’t know what the effects will be though, it could make everything much worse”  
Thor nodded at Bruce appreciatively then turned to Tony who unleashed a half-smile as Bruce chuckled half-heartedly from the far corner. Tony addressed the group pragmatically, "We’re gonna have Banner go green-sicko and then light him up like a Christmas tree”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although only released in 2000, I wrote the slow dancing scene with the song "There's Too Much Love" by Belle and Sebastian in mind. It's very much an old soul, warm tea, "let's go dancing tonight" kind of tune :)


	3. Chapter 3 : Interlude and then some

Avengers Compound ,20 hours later, 23:00 hours  
“Personally”, Natasha began, mouth full of Greek takeout, “I think sleep is reserved for two groups of people: the weak, and the way too strong.”  
“I second that,” Steve piped up as he leaned back against the large couch. Bruce nodded slowly in response, sitting opposite of the pair. In between them was a dinner spread ranging from the still warm shawarma of Natasha’s favorite Mediterranean place a few miles away to Tony’s half-eaten cheeseburgers all the way to the far corner of the expansive coffee table where Thor’s melting box of creamsicles lay forgotten and in a steadily spreading pile of melting, corn-syrup saturated, goo.   
Nobody really had been in the mood to cook.  
“I just..I want to be able to do it”, Bruce faltered, hands brushing against his cheeks and forehead. Natasha reached forward and placed her hand on his knee gently, finished chewing and swallowing a bite of food before beginning slowly, “Tony knows that you can or he wouldn’t be asking you to”  
She patted his knee and then leaned back continuing plainly, “I’m not going to lie and say that this won’t be the hardest thing you’ve probably ever done. But I am saying that you can do it. And you will”. Nat had been focusing on eating for the last few moments, meticulously chewing and swallowing, avoiding Bruce or Steve’s eye contact, but now meeting Bruce’s gaze intentionally and with unwavering support. He blinked back, surprised, then dissolved the expression and turned to Steve who immediately stated matter-of-factly, “The green guy can do anything”  
Bruce’s expression hardened, and his posture sank. “The other guy, he’s not so much the other guy anymore. He’s more part of me than ever before and you both know that, and I mean”, he closed his eyes and steepled his fingers before taking a deep breath and further gesticulating, “It’s not as seperate, I can feel more. On both ends, I’m not the dumb green meanie when Im the Hulk which is good but everything also hurts more, I can feel more and it’s not just that, I don’t recover as easily. What happens stays even when I turn fully back to me, back to human Bruce Banner.”  
Steve’s jaw twitched and he crossed his arms over his chest and countered with a hint of mocking in his voice, “You’re always human, Bruce Banner. We’re all still human”  
Whatever relief Bruce may have felt after his spiel now turned to disdain.   
“Yes, real easy for you to say Captain America. You get to wear the suit and take it off, same with Tony and Nat and Clint and everyone. You all get to do it and then come home and be normal. The past five years have all been a whole load of normal for you--”  
Natasha interjected sorely, “You forgot Thor, he’s not even human if we’re getting real about it”  
Bruce shot her a weary glace but then retreated back into the cushions of the couch, forgetting his original train of thought for a moment.  
It was quiet for a while, an uncomfortable silence punctuated only by Natasha probing the remains of the dinner spread for any appealing food, prompting paper wrappers and takeout boxes to crinkle and pop. It was Steve who broke the spell, voice level and words calculated, staring past Bruce and into the midnight depths of the glass wall behind him.   
“Banner, I don’t get to stop being Captain America. It’s not something I can take off. I’ve never stopped having nightmares, I lost 70 years of reality, I’ll never see myself age, I’ll never see my mom again or my best friend again (here Natasha whispered a “shh don’t say something like that”), it’s something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.” He paused and dared a fraction of a second glance at Bruce, realized he was paying attention, and continued, “It may not be as obvious as turning green and becoming 7 and a half feet tall but it’s still there and it’ll be there forever. The shield is just as heavy as what’s behind it”  
Bruce opened his mouth to protest, or remedy, Steve couldn’t quite discern which, when Natasha started, looking up from her crossed legs straight at Bruce, “Do you remember when we met? 2011. Calcutta. Around 4 am. I was sent there to recruit you. They had told me you’d be a hard one to get on our side, that you were too consumed with your work.” She shifted and took a sip of the soda can in her right hand before continuing, “I was still in Russia at that point and everything I knew was dark and terrifying and cut-throat so when they told me this I thought I was walking in to meet some assassin or organ trafficker, or hiestman who only agreed to follow that Indian girl to the meeting location because you had questionable intentions. But instead,” she raised the sloshing can in Bruce’s direction, “I met you. And you were gentle. And you were kind. And you were so different from everything I knew. You genuinely wanted to help that little girl”. Natasha stopped there, voice faltering. Her intonation indicated she wanted to say more, and her gaze lingered a bit on Bruce before shifting to Steve but instead of furthering she took a swig from the can in hand and nodded.   
Bruce mirrored the action, pensive , then chuckled, “Neither of you have mentioned the sacrifice part, my pain to bring back an innumerable amount of people and creatures and life and all that”  
Natasha and Steve objected immediately, both voices toppling on top of each other before Steve’s won out.  
“Bruce, man, it’s not going be a sacrifice. You’re not going to die. I don’t know if you know,-” Steve gestured around the room, emphasizing hi-tech features dotting every corner, “But this Tony guy, he’s pretty smart. Very very smart. He did his research before asking you to be the one to wear the gauntlet. You’re probably the only one that can handle its power right now. And you know what? If it works you’re going to be the person that brought back everyone. They’ll probably name a planet after you.”  
Bruce laughed, genuinely.  
“C’mon, you know it’s not about that”

Avengers Compound, the next morning  
A brilliant flash of light, an anguished scream bouncing off all the walls of the room- human and monster and hero all at once, and then….the chirping of birds.  
Bruce fell to the floor immediately after it happened, his arm from fingertips to shoulder contorted in an odd way and muscles writhing in pain, skin burnt badly. His breathing was coming in labored gasps and above the form of his splayed body Tony’s voice ordered Friday to prep a medical room. Bruce caught a glance of his forearm, skin awash in red and brown burns, and ached out a laugh.  
“Look- it’s not green anymore”


	4. Open Doors

Three weeks later

Sun stuck to Natasha’s back like a second skin, forming a sheen of sweat on her forehead and on the sides of her legs. She fanned herself impatiently with a spare piece of paper, attempting to ward off the balmy haze that eclipsed the interior of Steve’s car to no success. He stared straight ahead at the farmhouse a few hundred feet in front of them, one arm resting lazily on the steering wheel and aviator sunglasses shadowing his eyes. His black suit was itching in the heat and everything felt heavy.  
The radio was on, the fuzzy voice of a newscaster panning out from the speakers, rising and falling on all the right beats.  
“China, Japan, and Vietnam have all released statements regarding the lost toll and the count of the returned. There has been pressure on state and federal governments to perform an emergency domestic census to determine the United State’s numbers and to release a lost and returned statement, but moves to complete this action have been met with widespread protests based on claims that a census should not be taken until more time has passed, allowing all the lost to return to their families. Two things remains unknown: why did they disappear in the first place? And who brought--”  
Natasa pressed her knuckle to the knob of the radio, turning it off. She sighed and then turned to Steve a moment later, weary in her next decision.  
“I have to go in, I can’t keep avoiding it”  
Her black jumpsuit contrasted the white leather of Steve’s car, evidence of the funeral they had just attended.  
It had all been put together hastily after Clint’s family returned. Nobody had wanted to be the one to break the news to them and after a considerable amount of back and forth it was Tony who mustered up the courage to knock on their door and deliver the news. That drew the count of people who knew the location of Clint’s house to 3: Steve, Tony, and Natasha. Being the only one originally entrusted with the coordinates Natasha had felt an ebbing sense of guilt ever since she relayed the information to Tony and later asked Steve to drive her out to the place.  
The team had fabricated a story that Clint had died on a mission in Tokyo soon after his family had disappeared. This eased the pain yet maintained that he died a hero. The family didn’t need to know about his blood trail, didn’t need to know about his cold body forever preserved in the sunken places of a planet light years away. This was easier.  
The funeral had been held in a nearby field, with a considerable turn-out. Clint’s children and grieving wife, the members of the team, and a handful of old S.H.I.E.L.D. colleagues had been in attendance. The whole event had been a swell of pain and empty glasses and warm breath and perpetual sadness..  
Natasha had met Clint’s family several times years ago when his oldest child Lila- now a teenage girl with quick wit and sad face- was nothing more than a sticky five year old who ran circles around Natasha when she babysat and dubbed her “Auntie Nat” . Natasha had approached her after the proceedings and Lila immediately enveloped her in a tight hug, something so sudden it made Natasha rock back on the balls of her her feet and shoot Steve a surprised glance coupled with the mouthed words, “she remembers!”.

Now, Steve turned to Nat and nodded solemnly, pulling his keyes from the ignition and replying, “Yeah? Let’s do this then”.  
Natasha stepped out of the car and Steve popped the trunk, allowing her to pull out an irregularly shaped package wrapped in a blanket.  
They walked to the farmhouse in silence, Steve kicking up dirt and Natasha holding the package tightly under her arm. It was quiet and calm, a stillness that radiated everywhere. Expansive green meadows surrounded the house and a lone phone line winding to it was the only indication of its connection to the outside world. The home had fallen into a sort of disrepair in the last half decade with no occupants other than Clint who used it primarily as a quick landing base before jetting off to another obscure location, but his wife Laura had already started fixing it up in the few weeks since her return. On the porch an assortment of potted plants clung to any few and far between breeze that swung by them and a newly hung tire swing swayed gently on the sturdy branch of an ageing oak.  
When the pair reached the door Natasha sucked in her cheeks and stared daggers at it, making no moves. Steve took notice in a quick sideways glance and rapped the door once, then twice, slowly. He turned to her to see if she understood, and her expression softened in response. Two impressions spaced out, had it been tapped on her skin by Steve, would translate to “No danger” or “Safe”. She got the message and released the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding, bracing herself for when the door would open.

Promptly it swung ajar and a tall woman stood behind it, strong but with weary eyes. She leaned against the frame and drank up Steve and Natasha, eyeing the funeral clothes they hadn’t changed our of and bringing a resting gaze to the package obscuring Natasha’s left side. After a moment she smiled amiably and offered, “Nat, Steve, come in”.  
She waved the pair into the her home and continued absentmindedly, “It’s a mess around here, I try to keep it clean but with three kids it's hard”  
She gestured to a generously cushioned couch in the living room and Steve and Natasha sat down obediently, Natasha keeping the package securely on her lap. She caught Laura eyeing it again and immediately began talking to distract her, “Laura I don’t think I’ve met the boys formally- how old are they now?”  
Laura took a moment to shift her gaze from the package before turning to the stairs and urging, “Nathaniel, Lila, Cooper; Steve and Nat are here”  
Natasha gave Steve an awkward smile and he patted her knee encouragingly. Natasha had caught glimpses of Clint’s sons at the funeral but everything had moved so fast that they both melted into a blur of skinny knees, tear stained faces, and mussed brown hair. As the trio descended the stairs Laura turned to Natasha and gestured in the general direction of her children, “Nathaniel is 6 and Cooper is 10”  
For the most part the two boys evaded Natasha’s silent pleas for eye contact but Lila pushed them forward insistently. There was so much of them that was Clint, down to the turn of their noses and the reserved confidence of their demeanor. Natasha sensed a pang of guilt rising up in her throat but resolved to push it down, she had come here to complete one task and wearing her heart on her sleeve was not it.  
Laura took up a perch on the couch opposite Steve and Natasha with Lila by her side and the boys joining them on the floor. Steve started first, voice assured and rounded yet ladden with a degree of melancholy that communicated true remorse, “Clint wasn’t just a friend or someone I fought alongside of, he was my brother. I’m so, truly truly sorry that this happened under the watch of the Avengers initiative. I’m sorry we didn’t do better”, He turned his attention especially to the boys now who were sitting crossed legged on the carpet with perpetually downturned faces, “Your father died a hero, and his was the ultimate sacrifice. You have a family with me and Nat and Tony and everyone else on the team for the rest of your lives, don’t forget it”  
Natasha lost herself in the confidence of Steve’s voice for a moment. It was such a stark contrast to the Steve on the drive up to the house, who had insisted on stopping at a 24-hour diner and swinging back cheap beer after cheep beer until he dissolved fully and sobbed into Natasha’s shoulder as she supported his weight, walking through the abandoned parking lot to his car and then buckling him into the passenger seat. Everything about this was so far removed from the Steve who had sat on the edge of her bed the first night after Clint’s death and assured her that he knew what it was like, that he understood the aching pain that felt as though it could tear your soul to shreds.  
This was Steve: Captain America, Steve: it’ll be alright, Steve: radiating reliability.  
His words almost a month ago at a midnight dinner flickered back to her: the shield is just as heavy as what’s behind it.  
For what it’s worth the boys seemed to buy the act and lifted their heads. Nathaniel, the 6-year old ball of loose teeth and scabby elbows pointed at Natasha in a moment of child-like impulsivity and remarked observationally, ‘Mama and Daddy said I’m named after you’  
Natasha swallowed hard and Steve took it as his cue to enact the plan they had rehearsed during the drive. He gave the boys a soft smile and beckoned, “Is that right? Well then you’re lucky because Nat is a pretty cool person. Do you wanna go play outside? I can show you a few superhero moves”  
Laura seemed to take the hint and waved the pair out the back door with Steve, leaving only her, Lila, and Natasha in the front room.  
After the sound of the door closing Laura began, “He’s right. It was Clint’s idea but I was with him all the way. After we found out it was going to be a boy he suggested Nathaniel- the masculine version of Natasha- and I agreed completely”  
Lila piped up from her mother’s side, “I still remember you a lot, Dad would always tell us stories. I know it’s been 5 years for you, and even longer since you last saw me so maybe you don’t remember, but he said I’d always have you. If anything ever went wrong I could count on you”  
Natasha opened her mouth to reply, electricity rising off of her and heart racing but Laura continued before she could, speaking slowly as if her words were a realization she had taken a long time to come to, “You were his best friend, and you knew each other in ways I could never know Clint. He loved me, I’m sure of that, and I love him but there was something about you he could never shake. It was more than a brother-sisterhood. As if you were two halves of the same heart. Same life experiences, same job, same pensive attitude. It was as if you were platonic soulmates. He loved you deeply and so I love you deeply. You’re part of our family Natasha even if you’ve taken a while to find your homecoming”  
Nat’s skin goosebumped under her suit. There was so much of Clint here that still lived and breathed, so much love and loss and joy--utter and complete joy. Even if there was nothing left of him, there was this. His family was a living extension of his soul, his perpetual contemplation and careful words, his sudden outbursts of unbridled enthusiasm. He grew in the folds of Laura’s pressed dress and the furrow of Lila’s brow, in the staccatos of Nathaniel’s character and calmness of Cooper’s attitude. He was alive in so many countless ways. Natasha’s eyes welled with tears and she did much to push them back, wiping a pale hand to her cheeks and securing deep and steady breaths.  
“Thank you. Thank you so much. You have no idea how much it means to hear that.” She replied genuinely, voice breaking and dashing any reservation about a show of emotions with that quick succession of words. There was something about this place, something about the stillness and gentleness that let her unclench her muscles and unpin her shoulders. Something was safe.  
She let it hang in the air for a moment before continuing, “We weren’t able to keep much after his passing. Most everything was gone, but I found his bow and arrows, the ones he used on his last day with us.”, she grazed a hand over the rough cloth of the uneven package in her lap, Clint’s weapons salvaged by her tear stained hands in Vomir, “Lila, he would want you to have it”  
The words were saturated with a multitude of meanings. The air around them seemed expectant now. This was sacred, this was passing on something with an identity and purpose, even if its recipient didn’t fully realize it yet. Laura met Natasha’s eyes and nodded ever so slightly. She had known from the second she saw the package. Although she had worked with S.H.I.E.L.D, it didn’t take a professional to discern what the cloth enclosed. It just took a mother.  
Lila’s eyes widened and she turned to her mother, eyebrows upturning in a worried plea.  
“Mom shouldn’t you keep it? Dad always said when I got better or when I was older, not now..”  
Laura ran a cool hand over her daughter’s arm, pacifing. She turned to Natasha and simply said, voice heavy with gratitude, “Thank you. I’m sure that was hard to bring back to us”  
She didn’t know the half of it.  
Natasha arose and soberly passed the package to Lila’s arms, the folds of its protective cloth already beginning to ungather. Her hands were shook and she willed them still.  
Lila unwrapped the package cautiously, as if something in its contents might spring up at her. But nothing did, it was a painstakingly normal set of Clint’s weapons despite the places they had been and things they had seen.  
She ran her fingertips over the smooth surface of the belly of the bow and then the upper limb, quiet and pensive. Natasha sat back down and watched. It was a kind of soothing hold on the aching and ebbing feeling that had eclipsed her consciousness for the past month. This felt purposeful and right. It felt certain.  
The silence lasted for a few beats, underscored by the muffled and reluctant laughter of Cooper and Nathaniel outside, before Lila looked up and into Natasha’s eyes, a gaze coupled with running tears and a sudden assumption of responsibility.  
“Aunt Nat, I think I can make him proud one day”

 

Queens, NYC. Same day

Tony scrutinized the boarded up store in front of him, hands stuffed into the pockets of his slacks. A construction worker walked past him and Tony grabbed his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks before turning his attention and pointing at the store.  
“Hey wasn’t there a Chinese restaurant here just a few months ago?”  
The man made a confused face and looked ready to use some choice language before shadowing his eyes from the sun with one hand and breaking out into a laugh, crossing his arms over his chest  
“Aye hol’ up aren’t you Tony Stark? With the suit? You’re Iron Man! My kids love you, they’re never gonna believe this!” and then with a hint of confusion, “What’s Iron Man doing in Queens man? If there’s some aliens or some shit lemme know ‘cus I got kids and nephews here a’ight? I’m not tryna get caught in some superhero crap”  
Tony sensed his frustration building but plastered on a tight lipped smile, “Nothing's wrong, I just have some business to take care of in the area. Now wasn’t there a Chinese restaurant here a few months ago? Best dumplings in New York?”  
He gestured to the storefront and the man seemed to take notice of it for the first time, mouth opening in a O and assuring, “Nah man, you probably got the wrong address. This was a cigar shop and then a Blockbuster”  
Tony met this with a punctuated, agreeable, Mhm.  
He clapped the man on the shoulder and flashed a corporate smile, “Yeah, now that I think about it I probably have the wrong place. Sorry I bothered you, what’s your name?”  
“Oh I’m Carlos, it’s a real pleasure Mr. Stark my son is never gonna believe this, really”  
They shook hands and then the man was on his way, swinging a toolbox and thermos and muttering amused, “Iron Man on our own street...who would’ve thought”

Tony gazed at the store for a moment more and then pulled his phone from his suit pocket, typing out a text to Pepper

Just found the place. Nothing here. Looks like the effects are spreading. I’ll be home soon, gotta do one more thing first.

She wouldn’t answer immediately, as they both had long since realized that taking care of 6 year old Morgan was a full time job and not one that allowed for punctual communication. It’s alright, he had to pay a visit to someone anyways.

\---

Tony knocked on Apartment 20 at exactly 7:43 p.m., if his ticking Rolex was to be trusted. The paint on the door was a peeling teal blue and the once-bronze knocker now bruised a limey green with age and pressure. May Parker swung it ajar almost immediately, eyes widening to saucers.  
“Hi Mrs. Parker, I’m not sure if you remember me but Peter and I--”  
“Shut up”, she interjected, pulling him by his arm into the apartment, “Of course I remember, come in”  
It had been 5 years but neither the apartment nor May herself seemed to have changed at all. He had barely taken a seat on the couch she gestured to insistently before she burst out, “Has he come back? Is that why you’re here? Please tell me he came back”  
Tony’s eyes melted and he slumped slightly before regaining his composure, “No,” he began, “I came here because I thought he showed up here and you hadn’t told me”  
May paced back and forth on the dark wood floor across from Tony, one hand pressed to her lips and the other resting on her hip. She didn’t speak and Tony took the opportunity to continue, unfolding the hands he had meticulously crossed into his lap and elaborating, “Which would completely make sense, since I got him into all this. I’m sorry May, I really am”, he inhaled sharply, “I don’t think I’ll ever stop saying that, it’s the least I can do”  
He dropped off and gave her the opportunity to rebut him, unleash her anger or fear or lingering grief, but she simply turned in his direction and met his eyes, arms crossed over her chest, “You know, they’re saying it could take a while for everyone to come back. It could take years. But that still means he could come back, you know? It can happen? That’s hope. I’m gonna stick with that”  
She nodded on beat with her words, as if trying to assure herself as they escaped her mouth.  
‘I’m sorry I bothered you’, Tony remedied, finding his composure and rising to leave, “If there’s anything I can do please don’t hesitate to let me know.’  
May laughed sourly, ‘There’s not much to bother’  
She led him out of the apartment and into the adjacent hallway, then leaned on the doorframe as he waited for the elevator. As the sliding door opened he turned to her and nodded solemnly, “I still think of him as a son, May.”  
Her chin twitched and she shifted balance offering an almost silent “I know” before heading back into the apartment and shutting the door firmly behind her.

Tony’s phone began to ring as he descended and he answered it without hesitation when he noticed Pepper’s caller I.D.  
“Hey Pep what’s up” he asked, attempting to mask the defeat in his voice  
“Just got Morgan down and added the restaurant to our log. I noticed a trend and requested that Friday make some graphs of the data. It looks like it’s spreading geographically as well as sporadically in different timelines. The data on the parent line is glitching.” She stopped talking and then sighed deeply, “Tony, I need you home”  
He offered an ounce of pragmatic assurance and lingered on the line, discussing anything to deter potential questions about where he had just been or what he had said he needed to do.  
He feigned laughter at all the right moments and rattled off “Okay”s and “I will”s and “Yes I’m fine”s for a long time before Pepper ceased her prodding and yawned.  
“I’m going to bed Tony, don’t have too much fun in New York” she murmured  
“Historically, I have never had fun in New York” he countered, but Pepper had already hung up.


	5. Dinner

Mid-Air, Same Day

Tony leaned back in his leather seat, closing his eyes and letting a Bach concerto wash over him. There was no pilot or stewardess, no noise besides the deafening vibration of violins filling the cabin. Lazily, he prodded his cell from his pocket and flipped through the only 6 contacts he had before landing on Steve’s. He let the music swell one last time as the line dialed but shut it off when Steve answered. He hadn’t expected he would actually pick up.  
“Are you with Nat?” he asked, setting the phone on a chess board in front of him and switching it to speaker  
“Yes”, Steve replied, voice sounding wrung and tired.  
Tony made a move on the board then continued haughtily, “I didn’t think you’d pick up”  
The other end was quiet for a moment before Steve sighed, “Yeah well I did , don’t make me regret it”  
Tony chuckled then, “Remember when you first came to my house with the group and asked me to help and I said you all should come to dinner? Invitation is still open”  
Steve’s end was quiet.  
“Come over tomorrow. Bring Nat. Everyone will be there, I already called the others.”  
Still silent.  
“Where are you?”  
“Utah I think. Maybe Iowa. All these states look the same. Send a plane. We’ll be there”  
“Thank-”  
The line shut off and the music resumed, more cacophonic then cathartic but welcome just the same. Tony stared out the window waiting for his opponent to make a move, turning back to the board only minutes later. Happy had fallen asleep on the other side. Just as well. Chess didn’t really suit either of them.

Next day, 1:00 a.m. : Motel 

Grief is an entirely strange and characteristically perpetual experience. Natasha Romanoff was a product of the Red Room. Her perception of the world heightened to the extent that in a crowded space it felt as if her very consciousness was bouncing of the walls, vibrating with a constant intake of information. She never became fatigued, could understand a plethora of languages, harbored a physical strength that could rival almost any man. Natasha was everything and consequentially, she let her mind wander, she was nothing.  
She sank further into the give of the motel mattress, attempting however futilly to drift out of Steve’s line of site. There was pain still, and not one that could easily masked. It was felt in every bone of her body, every intake of breath, every twitch of muscle. It all demanded itself, superimposing onto her consciousness, eclipsing her thoughts. That was the real kicker. Emotional stress no matter how estranged from her usual brand of physical pain was something that over time she had learned to deal with. It was when it started dripping into her plans, her mental charts and tallies; sinking and stretching and impairing her judgement-- that was when it had to be shut out. It had to be pushed-shoved, really- into a far corner. Not for her sake, but because she was needed. As a spy and soldier and fighter. 

Natasha rolled over and propped herself up on one elbow, giving Steve a once over. He sat on the edge of his bed, feet stuck to the ground and arms crossed, muscles overshadowing mussed blond hair and sunken eyes. One solid and unwavering layer attempting to extend over the subtle brokenness that had become characteristic of him these last few months. Natasha read him easily, because they had spent so much time together, because he was a friend, but namely because she had seen him like this before-- years ago. It was a churn of guilt and longing. He opened his mouth and then closed it, cleared his throat and gazed out the window for a few moments before shifting his eyes back to Natasha. Her expression revealed nothing, unreadable. It wasn’t, “Please tell me I know something is wrong”, because they had grown out of that. It was childish to want to know someone else’s secrets, especially when sharing them might make you also share the responsibility of mending any burden they carried. This was more along the lines of, “I’m here. The rest is up to you”. Steve sighed and then let the air still.  
“I didn’t just fight my 2012 self. I went back to 1942 too. I saw Bucky”  
That was enough. Natasha didn’t need to know the rest. The inbetweens, the soul shaking fulfillment, the sensation of his heart giving out when he saw Bucky’s smile-- that belonged to him.  
Natasha let a disbelieving laugh escape lips, sitting up and turning to meet Steve’s eyes, offering him a chance to reveal that what he said was just a joke. There was no surrender. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me Steve”  
She shook her head and swallowed hard, a break that he attached himself to.  
“Natasha, I know it was bad. We all made mistakes. I missed him. I haven’t had anyone these past few years.”  
Natasha’s face tinged red and her brow furrowed, voice rising,pronouncing every syllable, “We all missed people Steve, everyone lost someone. I”, tears formed in her eyes, “I didn’t make any mistakes. I was ready to die. I watched one of my best friends kill himself. I understood the mission-”  
Steve cut in, trying to make amends, letting glass shatter and paper burn in the process, “Natasha, I take responsibility for it. I know what it could have done to the timelines I was talking to Tony and --”  
Natasha cut into his words, collecting herself but tearing into a red-hot flame under the surface, “I didn’t have anyone either, do you understand that? I only ever had this team. I was ready to do anything for this team. This is my family.”  
She rose and Steve mirrored her, and when she made a move to leave the room he caught her arm. Forever matching or besting the agility and speed of her movements, just like Clint. What an unlikely trio they were. He met her eyes intently but didn’t tighten his grip, knowing her defense instincts would act before her judgement could.  
He began firmly, “Natasha, it’s important to me that you know something, the day before Banner’s snap when Tony called us all to the conference room in the middle of the night, you let on a split second of- disappointment. You wanted to know why we all had notification devices and you didn’t-” . He stopped for a moment realizing what he had just implied and rephrased, “You’re not losing your touch, I read you that day because I looked at the right time”  
Natasha’s opened her mouth and took a step back but Steve continued,  
“You have one too, but it’s concealed. Tony was worried you might try to remove it.”  
“That’s bullshit. He’s known me for years” She retorted  
“Exactly, he’s known you for years. Now turn your head”  
Begrudgingly, Natasha obliged and angled her chin down and to the right. Steve pulled a pin from her hair and dragged it across her inner ear. If it hurt, she didn’t let on.  
“There”, he observed, holding the hairpin solemnly between them. On it an inconspicuous and near microscopic speck of red metal blinked intermittently.  
Natasha murmured a Russian curse, letting it flow easily of her lips.  
She stared at the speck wordlessly and then lifted her gaze, looking at Steve through her eyelashes, encumbered slightly by their height difference.  
“Don’t put it back. I’m going to go for a run”  
She pulled her arm forcefully up and out, more of a demonstration than actually attempting to get away from his grasp. Steve was a lot of things, but under no circumstances was he someone to overpower a person still on his side.  
He didn’t try to stop her, to remind her that it was the middle of the night and they were in a foreign, deserted town. None of that seemed important and she was most definitely aware of it all already. Natasha’s decisions were never rash, the consequences and safeguards were calculated beforehand. As he watched her jog down the stairwell in front of their room he was impaled by a sudden, crushing feeling of sadness; as if one of the people he most respected had lost some respect for him.

The soles of Natasha’s feet slapped the ground, vigor and impatience and fury. She promised herself she would run until she gave out, laps and laps and laps around this town until it was all dead and gone. Until she was the only one alive, running until her motivation turned from anger to joy. In reality, she stopped after 13 miles. There was more in her, more breath to let bleed into the cement sidewalks and more stamina to prove, but 13 miles seemed incredibly appropriate.  
She evened out her breaths and slowed to a jog as she neared the motel again, completing her loop. It was a dingy place, the neon sign advertising its name only partially twinkling above Natasha’s head as she made her way through the near deserted parking lot. Their room was two flights up and identifiable by the tv buzz behind the window, momentary static and rhythmic bursts of muted technicolor behind flowered curtains. She opened the door gingerly, careful to not wake Steve should he be asleep.  
He wasn’t, but she ignored him anyways,wordlessly stripping and pulling on pajamas before climbing into her bed and switching the T.V. off. This garnered a whimper of mock disappointment from Steve but other than that it was quiet for a while, enough for Natasha to think that her stoicness had earned her a night of peace, an excuse to not have to verbally forgive Steve for what he had done.  
40 minutes passed, the tension in the room growing with each second, until Steve yawned out passively, “How much did you do? 20? 21?”  
“I did thirteen”, Natasha replied somewhat apprehensive as she rolled over onto her side to face him, just making out the outline of his body and tensing of his muscles underneath the linen.  
“Don’t let me stop you”, he chuckled.  
“Never have.”  
“Then why, Nat?” Steve asked, voice seeming genuine and pleading, “You were mad as hell, I’ve seen you like that before. You had 30 in you”  
She let the question hand in the air a moment before deciding on a response. There was the option to just let it rest, brush it all off with a simple excuse and roll back over, surrender herself to sleep and pretend the argument never happened. But that wouldn’t work. Steve would nag, prod, apologize, break down her walls. It was better she take a sledgehammer to them herself than let someone else do the honors.  
“Thirteen was exactly how much I could do before the KGB serum.”  
Steve swallowed hard, but didn’t say a word. There was a mutual understanding that this wasn’t his story to tell.  
“When I started working with S.H.I.E.L.D., it was because I felt like I had done so much wrong in my life that I had to do some good. I had to right some wrongs”, her voice cracked before lowering in pitch, contemplating, analyzing how she should continue, searching for the path of least resistance, “I’m who I am because of the serum, I’m able to fight as part of the team because of the serum”  
She shuffled, rearranging herself in the sheets and meeting Steve’s eyes, “And I spent so long being okay with that. Forming an.. I don’t know, an affinity with that, and now I-”, she shuddered, “I don’t know, I’m just having a hard time and I did thirteen because that’s how much I could do before the serum. That’s all”  
Steve nodded, “So nothing to do with me?”  
“Well I ran because I was pissed. So in a way you had everything to do with it. But the distance, that’s my decision”  
“Still mad?”  
“No”, Natasha answered, decisive, not leaving any room for discussion. She could make out Steve’s masked disbelief, the hardening of his brow and mouth opening to protest.  
“I get it in a way. I don’t agree with it, but I understand. We all need people, family, friends. I just, I know. It’s okay”, she finished hastily, not wanting to expose too much vulnerability or give room for Steve to surrender some of his. It was too late in the night, too heavy an atmosphere. Simply, too much exhaustion already.  
He took the cue and yawned, dripping in sleep, “You and I are a team, and really you don’t need this. But it’s yours anyways”  
A small, plastic box sailed from his palm to Natasha’s side of the room, landing softly beside her in bed. Inside, a fading light glinted manically, casting a show of red shadows on the grainy sheets. Natasha stared at it, unblinking for a moment, letting the hue illuminate her face in the darkness, before decsivley shucking it off the bed and rolling over  
“Remember the flight tomorrow”, she murmured in Steve’s general direction before nestling under the covers and beginning to count multiples of 3 to keep herself awake during the first watch.

\---  
Tony had arranged for an automated private jet to shuttle Steve and Natasha from The Middle Of Nowhere, USA to his Northern California home, a subtle reminder of the wealth he still had despite surrendering his trademark glitz and malibu glamour for a more quiet lifestyle. The flight had no pilot or stewardess -”precautions”, as Tony had emphasized over the phone earlier, “with the way things are going you can never be too sure”- and it was eerily silent on board despite the roar of the engines. Steve had claimed a seat in the middle of the cabin and was lazily flipping through a travel magazine with feet propped up on the seat in front of him while Natasha mixed a martini in the wet bar when Tony’s voice suddenly emitted from the cockpit.  
“Hey-o, can you hear me?”  
Steve shot Natasha an exasperated glance and she hastily wiped her hands on her pants before turning to carefully open the cockpit sliding door.  
“No, no-I’m not actually there”, Tony quipped, voice now coming from the back of the plane.  
Steve raised an eyebrow at Natasha before returning to the magazine, unamused.  
“It’s just- hold on one second”, Tony’s voice cut off then resumed, “Upgrades. Still working on it. You there?”  
“Yes, we’re here. All good” Natasha replied, nursing her glass  
“Good” Tony replied, “Alright so you’ve met Morgan already but before you two get here I just wanted to remind you not to mention any Avengers, I don’t know, Avengers things, business, missions, whatever around her.”  
“We’ve been around kids before Tony”, Steve half chuckled.  
A loud thud then piercing crack came from Tony’s end coupled with “Fuck!” followed by an exasperated “Ok see you soon gotta go!”  
The comm shut off and Natasha burst out a laugh as she tucked further into her martini, “This is going to be interesting”  
Steve nodded absentmindedly, gazing out the window now. Natasha approached him and shooed his feet off the leather seat across him, claiming it for herself.  
“Hey”, she murmured, brushing her fingertips on his knee to get his attention.  
“Hmm?”  
“Are you good?”  
He gazed at her, entirely sunken eyes and messy hair, and the answer was obvious.  
“Yes”, he lied, avoiding her gaze and swiping the martini from her hand, stealing a hefty sip.  
“Ok Mr. Tough Guy I didn’t know you liked girl drinks” she countered, taking it back.  
“No such thing” he retorted, half smiling.  
“Really”, she asked, suddenly serious, “What’s wrong? I know it’s been hard for you these past few years. We lost… a lot of people”  
“You can say his name, it’s fine”, Steve replied, remaining convincingly stoic.  
“I know it’s been hard without Buck, but we did it, we won. People are coming back and so will he.”  
“It’s alright. We all lost people, Natasha. I’m not a charity case”, he insisted, jaw hardening and suddenly defensive.  
Natasha opened her mouth to counter but F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice boomed suddenly over the speakers, informing them of their descent.  
Natasha patted Steve’s knee, somewhat lingering before leaning back in her seat and slowly sipping off the rest of her martini, averting her eyes to the map projected upon a back wall of the cabin.

\--

Happy was there to meet them at the airport and enveloped Natasha in a tight hug before firmly shaking Steve’s hand.  
“Good to see you two again”, he beamed.  
“You as well”, Natasha smiled solemnly, “I didn’t know you were still working with Tony?”  
“Not exactly”, he replied, taking Natasha’s bag but letting Steve keep the duffel slung over his shoulder and leading them out of the airport, “I just help out, hang around. There if he needs me” he mused.  
Natasha and Steve nodded, following him out and into the bright sun and chilly air then into the back of a waiting car.  
“Will you be staying for dinner tonight?” Steve asked politely as they drove.  
“Nah”, Happy replied, glancing up to the rearview mirror, “I have some things to do and between me and you, I think the dinner is just a guise to get everyone on the team under the same roof again”  
Steve chuckled, “You’re a smart man”.

Tony’s home hadn't changed since the last time they had visited. It still possessed a log cabin feel, overshadowed by an assortment of towering redwoods and shielding a bubbling creek behind it. The place was so far removed from bright lights and the poshness that had become synonymous with Tony’s public image that it was hard to imagine he truly lived there until they parked in front of the house and his figure was discernible, leaning on a post of the wrap-around porch with arms folded against his chest. He eyed the car and watched Steve and Natasha tred up to the house, nodding at Happy before he drove away.  
“I’m glad you two could make it. I really am. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while” Tony insisted as they met him on the porch, radiating a sort of honest warmth and welcome. In contrast, Steve’s apprehension seemed to solidify for a moment as he met Tony’s eyes, hardening his grip on the straps of his duffel before beginning impatiently, “Look Tony I know why we’re here. Mission talks. Assignments. Whatever. Just be upfront”  
Tony gazed back at him, unmoved.  
“Yeah. And also dinner. However you choose to see it”  
Steve nodded affirmatively, eyes lingering for a moment on Tony before pushing past him and walking towards the door.  
“I bet your kid is cooler than you”, he sing-songed before turning the knob.  
Tony stifled a laugh before meeting Natasha’s eyes gravely, molding into seriousness.  
“How’ve you been, Nat?”  
“It’s getting better each day”, Natasha answered, hinging on vulnerability yet still defensive, “I’ll be fine, honestly. It’s him I’m more worried about”  
“Oh shut up” Tony quipped before softening, “Come here”  
He pulled her into a loose hug, planting a kiss on the top of her head before leading her into the house.  
“Pepper’s been cooking up a storm and Morg and I need help in pretending it’s actually edible” he mused.  
\----  
The meeting, if it could really be called that, was an event defined by its anti-climacticity. Warm light, evidence of the setting sun, had filtered in through the sizeable glass panes installed in the living room, casting dancing shadows on the team members’ faces. Natasha had claimed a spot on the hardwood floor, sitting cross legged with a notepad and pencil in hand, hastily jotting down anything Tony said that seemed important, face bowed in concentration in part to eliminate any eye contact with others in the room. Her’s and Clint’s friendship merging into kinship hadn't been a secret, and by the swing of attention towards her when she entered the room and the sudden uncomfortable silence that ensued, it was understood that her grief was pertinent and tangible.  
It was a cataclysmic assortment of people that perched on Tony’s floor and couches, acutley aware of the perspective that should everything had gone to plan, they wouldn’t be meeting again, and each teetering on the conclusion that responsibility had been thrust on them perpetually, not just for a quick time hop.  
At the front of the room Tony knelt in front of a fireplace, adding kindling to a growing flame. He rose and wiped his hands on his slacks before addressing the small gathering.  
“So we haven’t all met in a while” he began, leaning on a wall with one arm folded against his chest, “Some of you were at the funeral. Some of you I haven’t seen since the compound. So let’s catch up”  
Natasha glanced up at Steve who sat on the couch above her, but he didn’t meet her eyes.  
“Bruce is in the hospital”, he continued, beginning to gesticulate, “Brazil, they have more advanced treatments for burns than we do here. Some kind of snake skin thing. I don’t know, not really my area. He’s recovering so we can’t rely on him”  
Steve nudged a toe against Natasha’s back, but she ignored it and instead questioned, looking up from her notepad, “Rely on him for what? I thought everything worked?”  
From the other side of the couch, Scott Lang inhaled sharply and wrung his hands.  
“Kinda sorta not really”, he reasoned, “Timelines, universes, bad things happening. Alternate timelines exist and we’ve been collecting data that suggests they’re bleeding into ours”.  
He looked up at Tony for a nod of clearance before continuing, “We’re the only ones that remember our original timeline. Anyone else can be affected by new changes.”  
“So moon landing of ‘68 is everyone else’s reality”, Steve tried, “And we’re the only ones that can remember the original 1969 version?”  
Tony nodded dismally.  
Nebula, previously pensive, cursed suddenly, met by Thor raising a can of beer in silent approval of the action.  
“But we can stop it?” Natasha prodded, rising.  
Tony let a beat of silence pass before explaining, “I spoke to Bruce and Scott and did some research and we can, we just have to wait. Everyone that was dusted needs to return before we can try again.”  
“Yeah try what?” Rocket muttered, “Spit it out”  
“Going back, returning all the stones to their original places. Then returning to our original timeline. I dug up some of Stephen’s old notes on the stones and it could be that Reality is just fucking up how we perceive things-”  
“Language”, Steve interjected playfully  
Tony shot him an annoyed glance before continuing, “Messing up how we perceive things. Either way once we return the stones everything will go back to normal”  
“And what do we do until then?” Thor asked  
“Lay low, don’t attract attention. Take a vacation, whatever. It might take a while for everyone to return. You’re all used to fast paced everything, now it’s the waiting game. Just don’t get into trouble and stay alive because you will still be needed when the time comes”  
An uncomfortable silence blanketed the room for a moment before Thor resolved, “Ah, I can drink to that”.  
“Maybe you shouldn’t”, Rocket grimaced under his breath.  
Tony ran a hand through his hair before gesturing to the door, “You’re free to stay, free to go. Dinner will be ready soon and Pep made enough to feed an army if you’re up for it”  
“So that’s it?” Natasha asked, disbelief beginning to mount.  
“Yes that’s it”, Tony replied haughtily before stopping suddenly as if he remembered something, “Hold on, Natasha when was the last time you were in St. Petersburg, in Russia?”  
“Years”  
“Yeah but how many? Pre-S.H.I.E.L.D?”  
“Why?”  
“This video recently surfaced”, he began, uncertain, “Pepper showed me, it’s you, or someone that acts just like you, robbing a store in St Petersburg. Tabloids are all over it”  
“Yeah, Pre-S.H.I.E.L.D”, she assured, “Doctored footage”  
Rocket and Thor rose next, Thor raising his can in a “Cheers” to Tony and mentioning something about New Asgard and a coronation before clapping him on the shoulder and leaving with a bemused Rocket in tow.  
The room emptied quickly, Nebula offering Tony a rare smile and apparently genuine thanks along with a worn deck of cards before heading out the door, promising to keep comms on.  
Scott was last to leave, lingering a moment and speaking to Steve briefly before standing and addressing all three of them, “Thank you for everything, for believing in my idea. I’ve got a daughter who grew up too fast and she’s only a few hours drive from here so I’m hoping I can surprise her in the morning”. He met Tony’s eyes and issued seriously, “I’m always ready to help, bounce off ideas about this mess. Anything, just call”  
Tony nodded and took his offer of a handshake before leading him out the door. He returned to the room and gave the remaining duo a weary smile before deciding, somewhat gratuitously, “Capsicle and ‘I want one’, looks like it's just us”

 

Dinner was served outside, under twinkling strung up light bulbs and a full moon. Despite Tony’s warnings, the spread was aromatic and conclusively delicious in Natasha’s eyes. Most likely because the concept of a home-cooked meal had become particularly estranged, an afterthought in a life of practicality. It was similarly strange to watch 6 year old Morgan Stark in action. The little girl ate compelling amounts of food and made room in between bites to question Steve about anything and everything “Captain America”. Tony urged her on, filling in the gaps with wild exaggerations or falsehoods when Steve was chewing and couldn’t respond (“Morg, I think he would love to paint the shield a different color, I hear he’s especially into pink”). Morgan would then go giddy with excitement and bounce up and down in her chair, much to Pepper’s chargin. It was a welcome respite from having to actually engage in conversation and interesting in and of itself to see the child of one of her friend’s thriving, especially when it was the one friend who previously had an expectation to never “settle down”.  
Soon enough though, even Natasha wasn’t immune to Morgan’s curiosity.  
“Mommy says Daddy’s friends are going to go on a break for a while, when I’m at school and we have break I get to stay home and play with Daddy’s old suits. Is that what you’re going to do?” She asked, cornering Natasha without even realizing it.  
Natasha couldn't help but stifle a laugh as Pepper shot accusatory daggers Tony’s way. She could practically hear the “Safety and the fact that we live with a child” argument that would ensue later.  
“No”, Natasha responded, voice raised a pitch and coated in sugar. It was an intonation she reserved only for children, and only children that weren’t horrible. Previous recipients of the voice included most notably, Clint’s oldest daughter when she had been this age. This realization struck an aching wound into her heart but she continued thoughtfully, “I think I might travel”  
Across the table Tony looked up from the glass on his lips.  
“Oh really? Where to?” He asked, masking true curiously with the careful cutting and chewing of the meat on his plate.  
Natasha opened her mouth but Pepper injected before she could respond, “Tony, it’s past Morgan’s bedtime”  
\---

Natasha took up a post at the kitchen sink, dutifully washing dishes Pepper handed to her as she brought them in from the backyard porch. On her third and final trip she nudged Natasha’s arm and whispered, “I’ve known you for years. I know you’re not going to lay low”.  
Natasha raised the water pressure of the faucet to mask their voices before attempting to respond. Pepper cut her off.  
“You don’t need to tell me where or why but I need you to stay alive. He says he needs everyone for one last trip back and I don’t know why but I know it’s important. Don’t hurt yourself”  
She patted Natasha’s shoulder and deposited the remaining soiled glasses and silverware in the sink nonchalantly before walking away and upstairs. Natasha watched her for a moment before turning back to the warm water and sudsy dishes. 

Steve sauntered into the kitchen a few minutes later, just as Natasha had begun drying. He took up a towel and joined her, knocking elbows as they stood against the counter.  
“I don’t believe you, about the traveling”, he commented softly.  
Realizing that it was no use to lie, she responded, never averting her gaze from the faint reflection of the rest of the house in the window above the sink, ready to divert the conversation should Pepper or Tony descend the stairs.  
“"It wasn't me in the video. I have no memory of that. Either there’s an organization that still has some sort of control over me, there's a editor with a Russian IP who doctors footage flawlessly, or there's a clone of me running around St Petersburg. Either way someone wants me to go to that city. I'm going to go”  
Steve swished his towel against a few plates, stacking them neatly before replying.  
“You’ve put some thought into this”  
“I’ve seen the video before”  
“You have to take care of yourself, you know that. Don’t be selfish”  
Natasha shot him daggers before spitting back, “I’m not fragile”  
He clasped an arm on her bicep, steadying her, “No, you’re not. But you are family, and you will be needed”  
Natasha thrust her arm down and finished drying a bowl. Steve took advantage of the lapse and persisted, “If you're set on going, let me come with you. Bucky still hasn't returned and I don't think it’s because of some science-timeline reason. If he's not here there's a reason, and if I'd find the reason anywhere, it'd be in that godforsaken country"  
“You do know I’m from that country”, Natasha quipped.  
“I doubt you know the National Anthem”, he retorted.  
She finished and hung the dish towel to dry, calculating her options. Steve wouldn’t be dead weight, but he would be recognizable. Not taking him would ultimately mean him simply booking his own ticket and waltzing into the country with a red dot on his forehead. The conclusion seemed inescapable.  
"Fine. But learn to fight better with knives. We're not going to be running around as Avengers anymore, with shields and suits. This is my territory. You have to never let them know you're coming"  
Steve nodded back, just as Natasha caught a glint of movement in the reflection above the sink.  
Sure enough, Tony and Pepper were making their way downstairs.  
“You two should stay”, Pepper offered gently as she padded into the kitchen, footsteps muffled by slippers, “We have extra rooms, just stay for tonight. It’ll be good for you”  
Tony joined her and agreed, “She’s right, you need to slow down. We have room, food, time.”  
The offer seemed achingly appealing. Warmth and goodness and food and a hot shower. Steve took the brunt of the burden in refusing the offer, speaking first, “Thank you. Really, but we have a flight to catch in the morning”  
A half-truth.  
He shook Tony’s hand firmly then hugged Pepper briefly, making them promise to give Morgan his love and promising in turn he would be back for more of Pepper’s cooking.  
“Don’t count on it”, She called after him as he headed out the door, picking up his duffel on the way out, “Next time will be take-out, this was too much work”.  
Next was Natasha. Goodbyes were always hard, but they had become more plentiful and frequent in recent years, and this wasn’t completely a goodbye. There would be a next time and a later if she managed to stay safe.  
She hugged Pepper cautiously then Tony fiercely, and he mandated that she “Watch Cap’s back”  
It was kind of a mutual effort, but she didn’t let on.  
She met Steve outside, their forms illuminated only by a faint porch light.  
“We don’t have a car”, she mused.  
“We do, I texted Happy right after he left, asked if he could bring something back up”, Steve replied, reserved but triumphant.  
“Quick thinking,” Natasha affirmed, “But now you’ll owe him a favor”

\--

They rode in silence for a few miles, Natasha behind the wheel and Steve nearly falling asleep in the passenger seat. It was a quietness the pair had become comfortably used to these past few weeks, but not one Natasha welcomed now. On Steve’s third nod off she dialed up the radio, jolting him awake before lowering it.  
“Caffeine pill, in my bag. Front pocket”  
Steve retrieved the backpack from the rear seat and popped the pill dry, offering one to Natasha who refused.  
“How much experience do you have with hand guns, hand grenades, knives, smaller things like that?” Natasha asked, merging into a lane of traffic.  
“I once had a very memorable encounter with a hand grenade”, Steve mused before realizing Natasha’s seriousness and matching her tone, “I have experience. I’ve been working more on it since that night at the compound when I didn’t have my shield.”  
“Good”, she replied, eyes trained on the road, memorizing any license plate that tailgated the car.  
“We should stop somewhere, sleep. I can make a few calls and get us a flight first thing tomorrow”, he yawned.  
Natasha burst out laughing.  
“You really don’t know how this works do you? We lay low Steve, don’t attract attention. I wear a fake engagement ring and play young Russian wife bringing my American husband home for the first time. We wear disguises and fly economy”  
She glanced to her right and caught Steve’s expression, continuing amusedly, “I’ll make some calls. We’ll have everything we need by tomorrow morning. We’ll fly out of LA”  
“Fake it until you make it”, Steve agreed reluctantly, resisting the pull of the caffeine pill and reclining his seat.  
Natasha glanced over and sighed, then bore on forward. 7 hours to get to LAX.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this chapter took so long to publish- I’ve had final exams these past few weeks which really doesn’t mix well with fic writing. I’m now on break so I’ll be publishing a lot more frequently. Hope you enjoyed this bit!


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